Manufacturing takes a lot of energy. We’re not talking about a couple of extra Kilowatts, but hundreds of Kilowatts being used at any moment.
Unlike your home, when you reach the level of needing hundreds of Kilowatts to be piped to your business, you no longer pay per Kilowatt. Instead, you pay what’s called a peak rate charge. The power company figures out what is the highest amount of power the business draws from the grid at any point of the day and then charges the business a figure based on that demand for the entire day. You can see that reducing this ‘peak’ helps bring down that cost.
Traditionally, almost all of this power would have been from coal-fired power plants. We now know that these coal-fired power plants aren’t that great for the environment, cheap to run, or that reliable. At the same time, renewable power has become cheaper and cheaper. It represents a low-cost way of meeting some of the power demanded by manufacturing and reducing the peak rate charge.
Page has always been at the forefront of technology. Investigating and investing in new technologies that are more efficient in their use of material, energy, and time. In 2015, Page began the installation of 200kW of rooftop solar panels on its factory at Pomona, Queensland.
The result was instant, reducing the peak charge, culminating in a 40% reduction in power use annually. This significant cost reduction is passed on to Page Furnishers customers, who can also appreciate the 22,000 tonnes of CO2 no longer being released into the atmosphere.
By always seeking to do things better, Page is demonstrating that doing the right thing doesn’t have to cost the earth.
